


Devastation in Snapshots

by bluemermaid



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Case Fic, F/M, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Incest, Metamorphmagus, Post-Canon, Post-War, Power Dynamics, Tonks Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-21
Updated: 2015-02-21
Packaged: 2018-03-14 08:18:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3403523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluemermaid/pseuds/bluemermaid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tonks was assigned the Weasley case six months after the war ended. A postwar AU; exactly how AU it is depends on your interpretation of events.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Devastation in Snapshots

Tonks couldn't be blamed, really, for thinking she was the one in charge. The elder, the superior, the experienced. She'd been eying Percy from the moment he started working with her, yet somehow she had never expected things to end up quite like they had. It had gone very differently in her mind.

Still, she couldn't say she minded how it had all turned out.

*****

Tonks was assigned the Weasley case six months after the war ended.

Privately, she imagined that young Ginny must have simply run away from her childhood home. The family insisted she would never leave without telling anyone, but Tonks knew that sometimes these things happened; you never really knew just what anyone was capable of. Perhaps Ginny had grown tired of pretending to be the golden girl, the strong one, the shoulder upon which the grieving family cried. Tonks wasn't sure she could handle what Ginny had taken.

She kept her mouth shut, however, like a good listening investigator, and took her notes on Ginny's disappearance with an expression of respectful sympathy. It wouldn't do, after all, to grin and wink and nudge the siblings, as she had been wont to do in days long past. No one would have grinned back at her; they stood with somber faces.

Some days, Tonks wondered who had really won, after all.

*****

Percy showed up on the third day, with crooked glasses and wet hair plastered to his forehead. Tonks was filing paperwork, and startled at the sight of him. Always the leanest Weasley child, he seemed thinner than ever. She smiled gently and touched his shoulder. "Hang in there, eh? We'll find her."

"I'm coming with you," he said, his voice hollow. "I'm helping you."

Well, it was hardly regulation, but Tonks had never exactly been a stickler for the rules, now, had she? He just looked so lost and lonely there, and she couldn't bear to turn him away. She reached out and straightened his glasses. Their eyes met, and something hard tumbled into the empty space of her heart. But she ignored this feeling, filing it away in the Never Ever folder that sat untouched in the back of her inner cupboard. She wasn't ready to feel anything for anybody just yet.

*****

They traveled; they went to pubs and parks and Quidditch arenas, asking questions and not receiving any answers. No one had seen the red-haired girl. They stayed up late in secret rooms in magical hotels and tenements, pouring over interviews and maps and empty photographs. 

"It's all my fault," Percy said dully, scribbling nonsense on the edges of the maps, mad swirls that led to nowhere.

"Hey, now, don't say that," Tonks replied, playing the protector as she sat up against him on the edge of the bed. "You didn't do this. And we will find her. I'm sure of it." She didn't say what might happen if Ginny didn't want to be found; they would deal with that when and if it arose. At the moment, Tonks was having a hard time thinking about Ginny, anyway. 

Percy trembled beside her, and Tonks slipped an arm around his shoulders. She was okay with being the strong one, for now. For him.

*****

And it was like he didn't even know how to _function_ sometimes, his face going red and his voice wobbling in a mess of partially-articulated syllables that never led anywhere. Tonks couldn't help but smile when he was flustered, especially when such an episode came after she had tried to teach him something.

"See, this is a good tracking spell," she said, poking the parchment with her wand, as spidery lines stretched their way across the blank expanse, marking the trail of their witness, an old wizard who'd been traveling through the mountains when he'd encountered someone who may have been Ginny. "Of course, it only works if the subject is willing."

"I'm aware of such a spell," Percy said, his cheeks slowly turning red, and Tonks had to stifle a laugh as he awkwardly adjusted his glasses. "I do know how it works. I was Head Boy back at Hogwarts, you know. I have a rather large repertoire of spells."

"Of course you do," Tonks said, teasing, grinning, forgetting for a moment who the spell was for, why they were there. Percy mumbled something unintelligible, seemingly embarrassed by her response. She didn't know why she loved that so much.

"It's a good start, then?" he asked, looking hesitantly over at her, and Tonks enthusiastically nodded her head.

*****

Their first really useful tip came about a month after they had begun the search. Tonks noticed that Percy had started ignoring his family's letters, burning them slowly with the tip of his wand immediately after they arrived. His moods shifted from awkward pomposity to devastating gloom nearly hourly, and Tonks had been growing tired herself. She felt like a very thin tree in a thrashing hurricane; she was going to buckle over any minute, and crack along the center, losing all her leaves. She ached for something she couldn't have, for solutions unfound. Her hair was brown.

But then the tip came in, and Tonks bounced into the room with a bright, ecstatic grin on her face, thrilled at the prospect of cheering Percy. "We've got news," she said.

He looked up at her with dark circles under his eyes. "What?"

"There's an inn nearby," she said. "She's been meeting someone there. Supposedly. I have a contact who's seen them." She tapped the side of her nose. "And I also have a plan." 

He sat hunched over, his eyes narrowed in some sort of suspicion, and Tonks was filled with the urge to leap over and pull him into a warm, tight hug. She hadn't felt this light in ages, and she needed so badly to cast some of her sunlight upon him. But she hesitated, uncertain of what he would make of her advances. He hadn't seemed very interested in her; she was nothing but a means to an end. She didn't know what to make of it. "Well, what's the plan?" he asked.

"The plan," said Tonks, screwing her nose up, casting her inner net to catch the proper image, "is for me to get to one of these meetings first."

She hadn't done it in weeks, but the feeling of changing was never unfamiliar, and she knew she'd done it right, she always did it right. When she looked at Percy again his eyes were wide. He was hovering on the edge of his seat, his hands gripping the armrests so hard that his knuckles were white. Tonks couldn't read the expression on his face; he looked frightened.

"Well?" she asked, and he only nodded his head slowly, not taking his eyes off of her.

*****

She looked like Ginny and she walked like Ginny, but Tonks couldn't talk like Ginny and so she kept her mouth shut, only smirking in what she hoped was Weasley fashion, as opposed to a Tonks-ian grin. She sauntered into the inn and waited where she'd been told to, but no one ever showed up looking for her (for Ginny), and Tonks left at half-past midnight with disappointment clouding her adopted features. But she was not thinking of abandoning her plan; instead she began to ponder other possible uses for her new face. Surely someone, somewhere, would react to meeting Ginny Weasley, would confess to some past meeting that could unlock the mystery.

Tonks was losing her discouragement and gathering back her excitement, the same sort of thrill she'd used to feel whilst working undercover. She wondered why she hadn't thought of this before; disguising herself had always been her favorite part of being an Auror. Becoming someone new, hiding herself behind more interesting faces and personae. It made her feel alive.

She entered her rented room and reached out to turn on the light, only to be stopped by a warm hand closing around her wrist. "Don't," said Percy, low into her ear, and Tonks felt a very different sort of thrill.

It was light enough to see, just enough to make out the general details of the room, and of Percy's face as he stood before her. "Don't do anything," he said quietly, and leaned in to kiss her.

Tonks was taken aback at first before solidly kissing him back, reaching her hand up into his hair as she pressed her form against him. They moved away from the doorway, and Tonks gasped between kisses. "I ought to change," she whispered.

"No," he said forcefully, tightening his grip on her. "Don't do anything."

It took her one long, foggy moment before she realized what exactly was happening between them. She'd been trying to help Percy recover something he had lost by teaching and guiding him across the world, when all along she'd had the real solution swimming along just under her skin. Tonks hesitated, about to tell Percy that this was wrong and she wouldn't go along with it, but then he pulled her hard onto the bed and smashed his mouth against hers, and Tonks found that there was really nothing she could say.

*****

"Pretty girl, pretty girl," he whispered, tracing circles on her skin as they move together. "You like this, you like this, you love me. You love me, please, tell me you love me. You feel so fantastic, so good, so good. Pretty girl, tell me you love me."

"I love you," she whispered back, her voice strained as he pushed her deep into the mattress, as he pulled her long red hair back and sank his teeth into her shoulder. She gasped, moaning, and closed her eyes tight, trying not to think of what she looked like, of who she was as she lay beneath him and allowed him to do these things to her. "Oh, I love you."

She would never have guessed that such dark and dirty things lay beneath his awkward exterior, but the relinquishing of her control felt like freedom. She didn't have to think about solving mysteries, about fighting wars or losing people. She didn't have to think about anything.

"Fuck, you're amazing," said Percy, thrusting harder, and biting her again as he came. "Ginny," he said, and she didn't say anything at all to correct him.

*****

They'd never really find her, in that great wide postwar world, but somewhere along the line it stopped really mattering to either of them. Tonks, for her part, would never admit to that, and on the surface they would never give up the hunt. But she didn't use her new body for outdoor explorations anymore, and they always switched positions when the sun slipped low below the horizon.

It wasn't right, or normal, and Tonks knew that, deep down in the guilty corners of her heart. But Percy was so alluring in the darkness, when his face hardened and his hands held her tightly to the bed.

And besides, Tonks had never exactly been a stickler for the rules, now, had she?


End file.
